Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
Sharlene has the link this week.
Back to Istanbul by Bernard Ollivier and Bénédicte Flatet, translated by Dan Golembeski – I loved Ollivier’s three volume memoir of walking the Silk Road (starting with Out of Istanbul, one of my favourite books in 2020) and was delighted to hear about this later journey. At age seventy-five, he set off with his new partner to walk from France to Istanbul.
Falling into Place by Thomas Swick – I’m always excited for memoirs about Central Europe so obviously had to pick up this one, about a man who fell in love with a Polish girl in the 1970s and ended up moving to Warsaw: the personal story of a young man’s discovery of the world and his development as a travel writer. It is also a love story, as he and Hania overcome cultural differences, communist bureaucracy, and unhealthy separations. Intertwined with both is the story of the revolution that altered history.
Table for Two by Amor Towles – I’ve been looking forward to this collection of short stories and a novella by Towles.
An Open Book by Michael Dirda – Dirda refers to his childhood regularly in his writing so I’ve had some teasers before starting this memoir but am looking forward to getting the full story.
The Larach by Alexandra Raife – reread of my favourite book by this author.
Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson – I’ve read two thrillers by Davidson so far and they’ve both been entertaining but the treatment of women was fairly off-putting. I thought I’d given up on Davidson but Elle’s comment on my review of The Night of Wenceslas that she was really impressed by this one had me ready to give him another chance.
What did you pick up this week?
This was the first Raife that Penguin published in the US but my colleague Audrey was only allowed to do it by changing the title to Wild Highland Home. Our unpleasant former boss was the opposite of an Anglophile and only tolerated generic titles, which I always felt a pity.